Easter

May 24, 2014

We are often surprised how some of the issues in the NT are so current. Did you not resonate with the lesson from Acts? Did it not sound familiar? Paul’s encounter before the Areopagus is a very current issue. There is a lively discussion of what it means to be a religious in our time. To state the obvious we live in a pluralistic world. Inter faith is high on the agenda. The role of religion in our society is a passionate discussion, with many conflicting voices. Within the United Church there is a range of ideas about the character or nature of God.

Despite living in a secular age, our time is like Paul’s time; there are many unknown gods. In Paul’s time there was some sense of God. Paul suggested that not all the ideas were sufficient to create meaning.

When we encounter events like floods there is a question about the nature of God. When we stand with death the issue of how God works is raised. Something bad happens and the question of the love of God is raised. Behind such conversations are competing images of God. How is God active in our world today?

The issue of whether all ideas about God are equally helpful is still an active issue. Today, for most people, the idea of some transcendent reality, which we have called God, is not the default position. We have reduced God to being good. In place of God, many other activities and ideas now claim our ultimate loyalty. For some God is our creation, our projection that creates social identity that issues in doing good. In this view, the sense of God is an optional belief and does not refer to any reality. This is the view of some in the church. It is a logical extension of reducing faith to action and being a good citizen. The nature of the church is to form good citizens. It is civic religion, where we worry about acting but not the reasons for the actions.

Some decry this but like Paul we should see this situation as an opportunity to rethink our faith, to examine what we have committed ourselves to, to ask who are we going to serve? I think this time of many questions does suggest there is a deep yearning for a sense of God. We do want our lives to make sense. Think of conversations at funerals, how to sum up a life? Lived well or wasted? We do seek a wider understanding of ourselves, more than surface behavior. We have been touched by a sense of wonder. The problem is many do not have the language to express that wonder. Old images no longer are satisfying, do not give us a sense of God, a sense of wonder who is with us, in us and around us. Our language sometimes does not have the power to help us feel the One in whom we live, move and have our being.

In looking for new images think of it this way. It is said we all have music in our souls. There is melody and beat to our existence. We all feel music. To make that sense of music active and known, it takes someone creating notes creating a tune. This is done by writing music This act of creation, making a tune, is needed to make the feeling of music live. It can be country, it can be classical, it can be rock and roll, it can be folk and it can be jazz. It takes some form to make clearer the intimation of music in our soul.

Like music, Paul is suggesting the sense of God is universal. The problem is many do not have large enough container to give us a sense of God who is worthy of our worship. In a time of small images it is easier to have no image.

Within our tradition is a sense of God who actively cares for our world. One image that informs me is that God is active in the here and now. In the affirmation of God in Jesus we affirm God is in all of us, as close as our breath, deep in our soul. God is not far from us and we feel God in our living, our being.

This is a God who is not separate from us and things, is the one who exhibits best the relational experiences we have, Love Supreme. We know we are tied together, influencing one another by being present to the other. It is by listening to our words and action we tell one another how we are related, how we are present one to the other. In a similar way God is the one who is the power of relational presence, who works with persuasion through all experience, in every nanosecond, filling every open space with beauty, harmony, intensity, and novelty. God is in every moment filling all open space with beauty. God’s aim is always present. And that divine aim is directed to each of us, through our relationships, through our communal worship, in the community - the sharing of the beauty.

God works with the world as it is in order to bring it to where it can be. (Marjorie Suchocki) This means God is in relationship with each of us and all of reality. God in this sense needs us and the world. God depends on us to live out the divine aim of love for all.

This is the affirmation of John - the sense of God is present, the divine spirit is here in us, in our worship and by extension our living. Our actions show a radical knowing of the truth about reality - the universe is infused with divine love. The job of the church is to make this clear by words and action.

We are invited to a radical affirmation of hospitality. Love is incarnate in this world as we share love, when we know that there is more - a surplus of beauty which calls us into a way of living which hosts the world. In each moment of worship we school ourselves, to move from indiscriminate serving our personal projects to the project of serving God, through care of this world. Each time we nurture life into transformation, care for the world and its reality, work so more people participate in fulness, then we show God at work in us. It begins in letting the aim of God be our identity, it begins in worship that opens us to God and it leads us to the care of all.

May 01, 2014

Ever so often Suzanne and I feel the need for a road trip. We need to explore and have an adventure. As we drive out of our driveway we put on road music, beginning with the Guess Who. We off, looking for adventure and new vistas, to be changed by new realities and situations.

Road trips transform us by movement. We tell about road trips through movies, books, or tv. As a teenager, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It was one of those mind expanding readings, moving my boundary of reality into a wider world of experience. I lived on route 66, which is an iconic road in American history, in TV and in Music. There are many types of road trips: a walk in the woods, exploring our neighbourhood, stopping to see it with new eyes, listening to sounds we had not be aware of. Road trips take us into new territories, encountering a people that refresh us, push us, change our perspective. Roads less traveled inform our imaginations.

We find the Risen Christ in moments of spiritual movement and growth, adventures in ideas, novel behaviours, and in pilgrimages by foot, automobile, or airplane. We are transformed by our moving. God’s Easter Spirit is found most significantly in process, rather than stability. To experience God’s inspiration more fully, we have to be on the move, because God is on the move!

Our Gospel is about a road trip. Two people walking a road with some sense of loss, depressed because of what has happened to them. Then a stranger joins them. He seems to be unaware of what has happened. The first thing they do is to explain, to recite an early statement of faith. It is interesting that does not open their eyes to see the stranger as Jesus. The familiar way of affirming faith does not work. So they keep moving until the evening is almost on them. They stop, and here is the important point in the story — they invite the stranger to stay with them and share food.

It is in the welcome of the stranger that they begin to leave behind their loss and fear. Then, in the breaking of bread, and the sharing of the table their eyes are opened. They recognize that their road trip was one of transformation, their hearts were being warmed, and in the sharing of what they had they experienced the risen Christ.

God’s resurrection power is found when we let go of familiar landmarks and ways of understanding. It is to let go of comfort zones of old ways of understanding God in order to discover God’s lively, creative, and novel spirit-movements in the now. Resurrection transforms the known world and opens us to adventures we have yet to dream. Resurrection life is filled with abundant surprise and unexpected adventure. A living faith does not cling to the certainty of the “old time religion”.

Here is the important point the story they were not conscious that this trip was calling them to a new reality

In our living we often miss the hints of possibilities that are around us. We often close ourselves off from novel understandings, God works with the world as it is to offer visions and possibilities, guidance so we work for the healing of our world. The problem is we are not always attuned to these hints. We are busy, overwhelmed by events of our life, the stresses of our reality. It is hard to hear the hints for wholeness. That is why taking a road trip works. It changes our routine. It places us in strange contexts. New understandings come because we have changed our normal ways of being. The resurrection is a road trip into a new way of understanding our reality and ourselves. We see ourselves as claimed by love, sent by love to share that love with all.

This road trip with the stranger asked the travellers to let go of the past. The Emmaus encounter creates an expanded vision of possibilities.

In this encounter on the road, they were not told what to. They improvise and immediately and excitedly return to Jerusalem. Tasting the bread of the Eucharist, fed by the Spirit of God, they now have courage and energy. They have new life to share. What the experience tells us is that the Aim of God is specific to each of us, crafted to each person’s need, it is intimate. And that intimacy is also for the whole world, for the universal reality of God is found in many guises and ways. Inspiration is global as well as specific.

This road trip is a moment of transformation, “Turn around and take another path”. In the turning, new life is experienced. This is a whole earth promise and is for everyone. This story tells us that the Spirit of God is found in ways we have not expected nor do we have exclusive claims on that Spirit. Our road trips into new locations show us that God is already there. God is at work and we join that work, with others who care for the lost and lonely, care for an earth that needs protection, where the poor are fed. Road trips are taking paths that open our eyes to the work of God in our world, and an invitation to join in that work.

Resurrection is a road trip to new surprises. Our boundaries are expanded, We see in new ways what is being asked of us. In the welcome of the stranger the travellers on the road give us a metaphor for our time. How are the strangers being taken care of in our world? We are asked about the inclusion of those who are not like us. What kind of society is called for when we see the sharing of our goods is demanded of us? In the breaking and sharing of our resources we experience the novelty of resurrection.

How do we respond to resurrection in all its surprise and novelty in our personal and congregational lives? What new thing will we do in response to divine inspiration as persons and congregations?

April 18, 2013

The Shepherd as Outcast John 10: 22-30 The Reverend Dr. George Hermanson Easter four, April 21,2013

In works of literature we always have an introduction to the characters, and as we read or watch we get to know them better. This is the case of todays texts - have two main characters - the lamb and the shepherd. First we are introduced to is the lamb. Psalm 23 is told from the viewpoint of the sheep, not the shepherd.

However, the image of us being sheep can be problematic. It can be used to put down those who follow without a thought. It is kind of mindlessness that some critics of religion place on believers. I think most of us are uncomfortable with being thought of as unthinking, sheep like followers. Helpless like sheep. We are not really happy with this sense, for after all do we not have strength and power to deal with the issues of life?

To understand the characters we have to move back in time to see how sheep and shepherds were understood. The lamb was the symbol in the Passover of the liberating acts of God, from slavery to freedom, from no people to a people. It was the risk and venerability of the lamb that the poet was getting at - in the 23th Psalm - it was from the view point of the lamb who now has no fear, for the rod and staff comfort. The shepherd of shepherds cares for me, as the hymn puts it. Now I can face my enemies - external and internal - and overcome in love. It is a realistic understanding that there are wolves who seek the end of the lamb. There is danger out there in the world. The obvious image is the role of the shepherd is keep the wolves at bay - to protect. Comfort.

Yet while we have the image of the shepherd as a protector within the culture of the time, shepherds were the outcasts of society - like the fishers they were unclean by vocation. The were threatening and not turstworthy. Competing images. Comfort and threat. Unthinking following and being cared for from a place it was not expected.

The writers of the bible play with images because in the tradition there is the whole kingly image of the shepherd. But it is a strange image for a king - the boy shepherd David becomes the king. A reversal of all conventional images of power and prestige. So the image the power of God as that of the shepherd again would be a puzzle - protection that comes from being from persuasion not coercion.

Competing images. Comfort and threat. Unthinking following and being cared for. The good shepherd, the shepherd who guides you through the valley of the shadow of death, evokes a sense of calm and strength. And the lamb was an image of sacrifice, so here is the shepherd who is both lamb and shepherd.

Here the good shepherd is the sign of divinity. The lamb of sacrifice being the force of love that overcomes the threat of Imperial Powers. It turns all images of kingship and power upside down. From the outsider comes redemption. From the edges of experience comes resurrection life. It reinforces the biblical theme that God upsets the notions of respectability. It reinforces the images that the God of love welcomes all who society would call the least.

In the shepherd and the lamb the different parts of experience are brought together. Shepherding in this sense creates us as persons and as communities. The shepherd illuminates the lure of God that unites in beautiful, symmetrical harmony things we often see as unrelated. Our varied, complex pluralistic world, with many different perspective are in the shepherding care of God formed into a complex unity.

It is the lamb of God who experiences our suffering with us and is not overcome. It is the shepherd who walks with us, feels with us, who gives us the strength to be the lamb and shepherd for others.

This is a story of empathy. It is the dual function of God who is both lamb and shepherd. It is a powerful image of the God who protects us and suffers with us. The protection takes place in suffering and we are not stuck there, we are not defined by it, for with support and love we can live with it and through it. With the help of others we can overcome suffering. Together, we can build a new kingdom of love on earth.

The images speak of an inner reality that binds us together. Empathy is the spiritual ability to feel our way into another’s place, to feel our way into another’s person. It is the ability to indwell in the other, and this is the ability to connect. We come to know our selves through our interactions with others.

It is not what we say, look like or believe that is crucial. What is crucial for the common good is how our faith leads to action. It is to be surprised by love.

We need love. We need the unconditional love of persuasive love to get on with the getting on. What we need to do is to recognize it breaking out in the unexpected places.

We know those people, named and not named who can be counted upon to speak justice and compassion to the forces that seek to destroy. We know those who use persuasion to bring hope to chaos. They are the Nelson Mandals, the Martin Luther Kings and those whose name never hit the front page. We have all had a shepherd who revealed to us the persuasive love of God for all of creation. Know what. We too can be that shepherd. Know what. We have been that shepherd who brings healing comfort to those in pain, who feel in our very being the fears of the world and are not undone. We have been those who have kept the wolves of life away. We are called to this vocation.

April 14, 2012

Can We Trust God?Second Sunday of Easter - Glebe-t James United ChurchActs 4:32-35 John 20:19-31 The Rev. Dr. George HermansonJesus’ appearance to Thomas is one of the most challenging stories in the Bible. Thomas’ simple statement; “Show me” echoes down the ages and compels us to examine the basis of our faith, just as he examined his. We hear it in the phrase, "show me the money." He has been criticized as the doubter, the one whose faith was not sufficient to the task of believing in the resurrection. However, to call Thomas a doubter is to miss the point of the story. I find in Thomas a person of modern sensibilities and one who can serve as a model for our own questions of faith. It is more a question of trust. What is it that we can trust? Without trust it is hard to act.

We know our daily life is based on trust. We trust the other to stop at the stop sign. We trust people to drive slowly through a school zone. We have signs to tell us to do that, but it is still a matter of the person being willing to agree. All the police in the world will not make us slow down. To demand more police, to slow traffic down, will actually foster what it is intended to overcome, reinforcing the public mistrust the laws seek to remedy.

Freedom demands cooperation, and that means mutual trust. This is to see the other not as an other but as a person, that the stranger and those different are part of our community. It is to transcend us and them, to us. This is essentially a religious question. For it is a question of moral leadership. Now Thomas is our connecting point. For we are like him. We stand with Thomas. We are the community of John's time, a minority in our hostile culture. We are the church that is reforming and struggling with how it will be the church."Show me the money," is the expression when we express skepticism about the truth of someone's statement. Where we really do not have trust in the witness. Before we commit ourselves to something, we want to know whether it will work thus worth the energy or commitment.William James writes about first hand and second hand faith. While important second hand faith does not give us the energy for action. It is first hand faith that builds trust and energy for the flourishing of life.

We share the same issues with Thomas. He wanted first hand faith. Like him, we don't want second hand faith. It is not good enough for the flourishing of life. Nor did he want blind faith, for that is too easily misused. Blind faith does not encourage us to probe the surface reality we experience. Blind faith allows to cruise through life without really living its joy and danger. Blind faith appeals to our prejudices or ideology or the way things are without questioning.Thomas wanted the experience of deeper vision or sight. We see this in the play on the words seeing, touch, thrust. He wanted to access the inner workings of reality. Like Thomas we, too, want a real experience of God. Like Thomas, we want to access that experience of God, the experience we need to change our perception about what is real.

The three easy-to-miss words mark the fact that this story will not end in a feeble spasm. Instead, the momentum Thomas will bring the burgeoning Christian movement will be far-reaching. Think of the tradition of Thomas founding churches in India."After eight days," the text notes, Christ appeared to Thomas. References from the Old Testament encourage us to consider the divine blessing and commissioning that occur on the eighth day. The eighth day is the fulfillment of priestly ordination, the day for dedication of the firstborn, a day to mark in circumcision the covenant relationship, a day of gratitude and offering. Could it be that Thomas will be marked on this eighth day and commissioned for service?

When Thomas has his closed-door encounter with the raised Christ, unbelief isn't the issue. Perception is. He applied critical faith.

Critical faith is based on trust in God. It is first hand faith. It is to have faith that God is working toward beauty and the good, and will not turn aside from this task. God is dependable. Critical faith knows we can deepen our faith by asking critical questions of our tradition and inherited belief statements. Critical faith knows that all life is lived in faith. We know this by the language we use. We speak of optics or the lenses; templates; models; patterns; metaphors; and myths. Such images tell us we have a faith statement that guides us in our search for truth.

We do that in living by practice, by living in new ways, thinking new thoughts, imaging new reality. This is critical faith. We can test the truth of God by the walk of faith. We can test the truth of our faith by how we live.

If we truly believe that Jesus preached an inclusive kingdom where God loved all of creation then that will concretely change the way we live. The experience of Risen Lord brings a new, second creation to those whose animating spirit has been blocked, thwarted, or disillusioned. We are in wonder so we live with wonder.

God is here, in present reality and when we let that guide us, God will become even more present in our living. God is related to all that now is, touches all living in this moment. God is not only related to all the past and present, God opens the future. Resurrection is the statement that God is faithful to us and God has chosen us.

To begin here is to see a Mystery of love so deep and compelling that we cannot escape it, even when we deny it. This mystery of Grace that affirms us and trusts our free human will. God is faithful and has chosen us. It is to know we are acceptable. This is the ground of moral leadership, for we are called to be witnesses to God's grace so that when others look at us they can take courage. If we live that vision, we become a beacon to others.

May 27, 2011

Acts 17: 22 -31 Who are you going to Serve? Easter 6, May 29,2011John 14:15-21 The Reverend Dr. George Hermanson

We are often surprised how some the issues in the NT are so current. Did you not resonate with the lesson from Acts? Did it not sound familiar? Paul’s encounter before the Areopagus is a very current issue. There is a lively discussion of what it means to be a religious in our time. To state the obvious we live in a pluralistic world. Inter faith is high on the agenda. The role of religion in our society is a passionate discussion, with many conflicting voices. Within the United Church there is a range of ideas about the character or nature of God.

In the pages of the Observer there have been many passionate letters about the idea of post theism. We speak of seekers as those who seek some sense of the divine. The discussions reveal how many have experienced the church. Some have been touched by the church, but are disconnected and feel at its edge. Others have decided that religion is not worth any energy. Then, there are those for whom there is some nostalgic feeling for faith and turn up now and again. And then there are those who are spiritual but not religious.

Despite living in a secular age, it is like Paul’s time; there are many unknown gods. In Paul’s time there was an active belief in some transcendent reality, there was some sense of God. Paul suggested that not all the ideas were sufficient to create meaning.

The issue of whether all ideas about God are equally helpful is still an active issue. Today, for most people, the idea of some transcendent reality, which we have called God, is not the default position. We have reduced God to being good. In place of God, many other activities and ideas now claim our ultimate loyalty. For some God is our creation, our projection that creates social identity that issues in doing good. In this view, the sense of God is an optional belief and does not refer to any reality. This is the view of some in the church. It is a logical extension of reducing faith to action and being a good citizen. The nature of the church is to form good citizens. It is civic religion, where we worry about acting but not the the reasons for the actions.

Some decry this but like Paul we should see this situation as an opportunity to rethink our faith, to examine what we have committed ourselves to, to ask who are we going to serve? I think this time of many questions does suggest there is a deep yearning for a sense of God. We do want our lives to make sense. We do seek a wider understanding of ourselves, more than surface behavior. We have been touched by a sense of wonder. The problem is many do not have the language to express that wonder. Old images no longer are satisfying, do not give us a sense of God, a sense of wonder who is with us, in us and around us. Our language sometimes does not have the power to help us feel the One in whom we live, move and have our being.

In looking for new images think of it this way. It is said we all have music in our souls. There is melody and beat to our existence. We all feel music. To make that sense active and known it takes someone creating notes and writing music This act of creation, making a tune is needed to make the feeling live. It can be country, it can be classical, it can be rock and roll, it can be folk and it can be jazz. It takes some form to make clearer the intimation of music in our soul.

Like music, Paul is suggesting the sense of God is universal. The problem is many do not have large enough container to give us a sense of God who is worthy of our worship. In a time of small images it is easier to have no image.

Within our tradition is a sense of God who actively cares for our world. One image that informs me is that God is active in the here and now. In the affirmation of God in Jesus we affirm God is in all of us, as close as our breath, deep in our soul. God is not far from us and we feel God in our living, our being.

This image is a God who is not separate from us and things, is the one who exhibits best the relational experiences we have, Love Supreme. We know we are tied together, influencing one another by being present to the other. It is by by listening to our words and action we tell one another how we are related, how we are present one to the other. In a similar way God is the one who is the power of relational presence, who works with persuasion through all experience, in every nanosecond, filling every open space with beauty, harmony, intensity, and novelty. There is no one center to the universe - everywhere is here, all is a center to all that is. God is in every center filling all open space with beauty. God’s aim is always present. And that divine aim is directed to each of us, through our relationships, through our communal worship, in the community-the sharing of the beauty.

God works with the world as it is in order to bring it to where it can be. (Marjorie Suchocki) This means God is in relationship with each of us and all of reality. God in this sense needs us and the world. God depends on us to live out the divine aim of love for all.

This is the affirmation of John - the sense of God is present, the divine spirit is here in us, in our worship and by extension our living. Our actions show a radical knowing of the truth about reality - the universe is infused with divine love. The job of the church is to make this clear by words and action. We focus the love for when love is not focused it spins away into meaningless chatter and noise.

We are invited to a radical affirmation of the hospitality. Love is incarnate in this world as we share love, when we know that there is more - a surplus of beauty which calls us into a way of living which hosts the world. In each moment of worship we school ourselves, to move from indiscriminate serving our personal projections to the project of serving God, through care of this world. Each time we nurture life into transformation, care for the world and its reality, work so more people participate in fulness, then we show God at work in us. It begins in letting the aim of God be our identity, it begins in worship that opens us to God and it leads us to the care of all.

In our Acts passage we get the marching orders for the church. We may puzzle over the meaning of the coming of the Spirit. They did then. The watchers ask if the disciples were drunk.

It is called ecstatic speech. We have all some experience of this when we are so excited we cannot get out our words or they tumble over one another. Then there are times the moment of awe is so great we say nothing. There is nothing magical about this experience, and the writer of Acts uses colourful and metaphorical language to tell of a moment when the world changed.

We all have a moment or event in which our world changed. We heard or saw things in new ways, heard or saw things that we had never had before. Our world was changed, we were changed.

When I was in seminary we would issue a joke course outline, and one course was on the ascension - "It will meet in the elevator." Ascension Sunday is one that is often ignored in the UCC. Yet it is an important moment in the gospels. For Luke it is a literary device to get Jesus off stage so the church could get on with its work.

It is the time after Jesus’ resurrection where followers become leaders, and must speak with their voice, testify and witnessing to their world. Like a good spiritual leader, Jesus must depart physically so we can mature as spiritual leaders. The early church claimed the Spirit that informed Jesus, that comes from God, to witness and testify in their time and space. We, too, are called to live out of the Spirit of God, to find our own witness and testimony for our age.

April 30, 2010

"God is seeking to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. ... we live not for rewards after death, but because our living will make the common good better. Faith is the ground for compassionate action in our world that needs healing."

Year CSeason of EasterFifth Sunday

Acts 11:1-18Read the Bible passage: Acts 11:1-18, The Message; or Acts 11:1-18, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Peter Drucker, who developed one of the first executive MBA programs at Claremont Graduate University, said the first question any organization needs to ask is: “What is your business?”

This is the question the church is at the moment asking, both in the context of what it means to be The United Church of Canada, and how to be the church in a community.

Now it would seem self evident that we know what we are about. However, it isn’t. We have as many theories about being church as there are people. For some it is a question of survival; we must grow. For others, it is to be the same as it was years ago. For others, it is to speak to power words of justice and compassion. For others, it is to support what they think are the values of traditional society. For others, it is to have correct unchanging doctrine - this is what you must believe. For others, it is to enhance their sense of God and have a spirituality that sustains them in their daily living.

April 23, 2010

"To get more fully at this reversal image of the shepherd I would ask you to imagine ... There is this burly, bearded, tattooed motorcycle bad guy with the lamb around his shoulders. No way, is our first response. Redemption comes from there?"

When we go to a movie or see a drama there is always some music to introduce the main characters. In today's text we have two main characters - the lamb and the shepherd. The first we are introduced to is the lamb. For the Psalm is told from the viewpoint of the sheep, not the shepherd.

The image of us being sheep also has it problems. It tends to be used to put down those who follow without thought. It is kind of mindlessness that some critics of religion place on believers. I think most of us are uncomfortable with being thought of as unthinking, sheep like followers. If we had music to underline the character it would be Neil Young’s, Helpless, Helpless.

Every Sunday when I was growing up I looked at the stain glass image at the front of the church. It was so vivid that when I close my eyes I can still see that iconic picture of Jesus as the great Shepherd. There he was in vivid color, with the lamb over his shoulders.

There was a strange comfort in that image. But being a prairie boy lambs and sheep were not in my experience. Cows, pigs and chickens yes. And raised on Saturday afternoon cowboy movies - shepherds were always the bad guy, moving into ranching territory and ruining it. So the comfort was always colored with threat. When it was to be a comfort it turned into the image of the lonesome cowboy caring for the cattle. And those shepherd songs became cowboy songs on the lone prairie.